Yes

By Sarah Walker | BobTuskin.com

Actually, it’s been well-established for over 70 years that the Oral Poliovirus Vaccine (OPV) causes some cases of paralytic polio. The OPV, which went into use in 1961, contains live attenuated polioviruses, which “are excreted in the stool of the vaccinated person for up to 6 weeks after a dose,” and can infect others with the vaccine virus. “Outbreaks of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) have been reported in many countries of the world.” And these vaccine viruses can circulate for years.

In the U.S., “an average of 9 cases of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP) were confirmed each year from 1961 through 1989.” Between 1980 and 1999, OPV caused 144 out of the 152 cases of paralytic polio in the U.S. – 95% of all the cases reported in that time period. For this reason, use of OPV was discontinued in the U.S. in 2000. Despite this, at least one vaccine-induced outbreak of paralytic polio has occurred in the U.S. since then – in 2005.

And OPV continues to be used in other countries, like India, where in 2006 alone, 1600 cases of vaccine-induced paralytic polio were reported, and “[p]ublic health experts . . . estimate that between 100 and 180 children . . . develop vaccine-associated polio paralysis (VAPP) each year . . . .”

In addition to the vaccine-induced polio outbreaks in India, an article in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics reported that there has been “a huge increase in non-polio AFP [acute flaccid paralysis], in direct proportion to the number of [OPV] doses of the vaccine used.” In 2011 alone, “an additional 47,500 children were newly paralysed [sic] in the year, over and above the standard 2/100,000 non-polio AFP that is generally accepted as the norm.” Non-polio AFP is “[c]linically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly . . . .”

OPV is also used in Nigeria, where it caused an estimated 700,000 polio infections, including at least 403 cases of paralytic polio between 2005 and 2011. And there have been recent OPV-induced polio outbreaks in the the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

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